From The History Room @ The Pekin Public Library: Kiwanis trip to D.C.: ‘On Our Way’

Saturday

Jan 14, 2017 at 12:58 AM

Jared Olar / Library assistant

Pekin Daily Times owner and publisher F. F. McNaughton used his daily “Editor’s Letter” newspaper column to chronicle the weeklong trip to Washington, D.C., that the Pekin Kiwanis Club and Peoria Teachers Party took in June 1932. Here is the first “log entry,” headlined “ON OUR WAY” and published on the front page of the June 13, 1932 Pekin Daily Times.

As this is being read by those of you who get your papers in the evening, I am trying to write you another letter on my knees.

I don’t mean that I am on my knees.

But the letter I am writing is on my knees.

We are on our way to Washington.

Some 200 of us left Tazewell county this noon over the Alton with a nice send-off from the Broadway depot of the Alton in Pekin.

We followed the circuitous route of the Alton to Bloomington and from there we rolled over the main line of the Alton to Chicago.

We are about due in Chicago as the average reader is picking up his paper this June Monday afternoon at 5 o’clock.

We might as well set our clocks ahead right now for Chicago goes on daylight saving time which is eastern standard time.

So we’ll be on time an hour ahead of yours the rest of the week.

That means that daylight will leave pretty early in the evening.

So this means the night’s sleep will not be overly long. Daylight will come at an hour earlier than usual, and into the day coach the light will pour at this midsummer dawn, wakening all of us.

I shall try to post a short note to you from Chicago tonight, then maybe wire you a few lines from the east for tomorrow.

By the way, a couple tips.

If you haven’t filed your claims at the Farmers National bank, better do so this evening, and be sure to do so by tomorrow.

Another tip. There is to be a tax on motor oil go on a week from today – 4c a gallon. But it is not on yet this week.

Well, we’ll be wiring you.

Learn more about Pekin and Tazewell County history, read past columns, view slideshows and photo galleries, post comments and suggestions, and keep up to date on the Pekin Public Library’s Local History Room collection at https://fromthehistoryroom.wordpress.com/

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